Consume

Oct 18, 2012, 10:10AM

It's Time For Mark Zuckerberg To Buy the Yankees

The New York Yankees, the
most hated and beloved sports franchise in American history, are in the news
again. Now, the team is always Topic A in the city, but right now, as Joe
Girardi’s roster of well-paid stars faces elimination for the American League
pennant in Detroit—they’re down three games to none just after 1 p.m. today,
but as a Red Sox fan I won’t rest until they’re officially snuffed—the hub-bub
has spiked to an extraordinarily pleasing level. Alex Rodriguez, maybe the most
detestable and self-aggrandizing athletes alive, has sat on the bench and GM
Brian Cashman—the worry lines on his face make him look 68 rather than 45—is
batting down rumors that the slipping sliding away third baseman will be dealt
to some sucker of a team in the off-season. Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher can’t
hit in this post-season, and St. Derek Jeter—a justifiable Hall of Famer whose
fielding ability (or lack thereof) still draws huzzahs from the mostly idiotic
sports broadcasters on Fox and TBS (Ron Darling excluded)—busted his ankle and
is prepping for surgery.

If the Tigers can kick and
kill this dog while it’s down I’ll be able to relax and watch the World Series
leisurely.

Jonathan Mahler, author of
the excellent Ladies and Gentlemen, The
Bronx is Burning, wrote about the current Yanks contretempt on Oct. 17, “The Decline and Fall of the Yankees Empire,” and while documenting
the team’s current post-season power outage, concentrated mainly on the
business itself and the hubris of owners Yankee Global Enterprises LLC
(controlled by the Steinbrenner family) for the new stadium it built, with an
inexplicable lift from taxpayers, and opened in 2009. Riffing on the
much-discussed empty seats at the Stadium during the first two games of the
Detroit series last weekend, Mahler, who at one time shared in a season-ticket
plan, detailed just how expensive it is to attend a game in the Bronx. He
likened the new limestone edifice to Versailles and Enron’s “postmodern skyscraper
in Houston,” suggesting that a consumer mutiny may be in the offing. As a
former New Yorker, I’ve attended a lot of games at the pre-renovated “old”
Yankee Stadium in the 1960s; purchased a season ticket package for several
years in the 90s, which cost about $11,000 for 81 four-ticket games—mostly a
business expense that was recouped by May each year—and have taken my sons to
the new park a couple of times.

As I wrote two years ago,
the Steinbrenner monument reminded me of a Third Reich edifice, the limestone
gleaming, the ceilings impossibly high with flags of Yankee stars in place of
swastikas, and an unceasing noise level inside, sometimes provided by fans, but
more often the blare of music and rotating advertising. To say Yankee Stadium
is garish would be an understatement of gross proportions.

Mahler speculates: “The math
is simple: The Yankees can buy all of the players they want, but they can’t
make them hit. If they don’t hit, the team will lose, and Yankees fans—having
emptied their wallets to see a winning team—will lash out, or simply stop
buying tickets and merchandise altogether.”

Naturally, I hope that comes
to pass. (I’d be remiss in not pointing out that the Red Sox, under the
stewardship of primary owner John Henry, gouge Boston’s fans—highest prices in
baseball—and demonstrated equal disregard for their consumer base by
perpetuating a mythical “sellout streak.”) I don’t think it will, but there are
worse ways to pass time than daydreaming.

Global Enterprises, as
Mahler notes, is worth approximately $1.7 billion, but after the Dodgers
fetched the mind-boggling sum of $2.1 billion earlier this year, I think that
Yankees figure is understated. I’ve bandied about the following idea before,
and now, with perhaps some institutional distress reaching new levels, here it
is again. Mark Zuckerberg, still trying to recover from his botched Facebook
IPO, ought to make a preemptive bid on Global Enterprises, just as Rupert
Murdoch did with Dow Jones & Co. several years ago, and publicly offer $3.5
billion for the team. Zuckerberg has access to that huge sum, and as the
Facebook management team is having difficulty translating its billion users
into steady revenue, darkening its future prospects, he could use a “legacy”
business to provide, in today’s lingo, a platform from which he can reap huge
profits.

The Yankees are not for
sale, at least that I know of, but if Zuckerberg made such a bid, the minority
shareholders in Global might very well want to cash out at such a premium, and
if the Steinbrenner family balks, it could face endless litigation.

Two legendary companies, one
nearly a century old, the other still not at the decade mark, swinging for the
fences. At one time in American business, that would be called “synergy.”